Ah, the fash. They just never learn. They’re repeatedly told that they’ll always lose in Melbourne, yet every so often they insist on raising their heads.
Sunday 24 June was the latest occasion. And yet again they lost. The “Aussie Pride Flag March”, organised by far right group True Blue Crew, attracted about 70 people to the Carlton Gardens at midday.
Heavily guarded by Victoria Police, they intended to wave flags and march through the city to Parliament. To their dismay, a loud, energetic crowd of 150-200 anti-fascists, mobilised by the Campaign Against Racism and Fascism, disrupted their event, preventing the “Master Race” from marching. The action drew cheers and applause from cafe goers along the way.
Having copped another defeat, the fascists dispersed. Some attendees went looking for someone to pick on. Blair Cottrell, infamous for suggesting that a picture of Hitler should be hung in every classroom, spent his afternoon harassing Dandyman, a popular street performer, for wearing a pink leotard.
Cottrell was caught on video declaring, “I’m a fascist, what are you going to do about it?” But he overreached. A wave of revulsion swept social media. Two days later, 200 people filled Federation Square in a show of solidarity with Dandyman.
Channel Ten’s The Project ran a segment on the incident, helping to highlight to greater numbers of people that fascists are active in Melbourne, and that there is determined resistance to them.
All up, it was an encouraging few days of anti-fascist activism.
Measured by the sheer volume of stuff produced, capitalism is a very successful system. According to World Bank data, in 1960 global gross domestic product (GDP)—which measures the monetary value of goods and services sold—was just under US$1.4 trillion. By 2022 it had risen to $101 trillion. The world’s population has increased a lot in that time, but the volume of stuff produced has increased by far more.
As Israel’s latest brutal war against the people of Gaza drags on, the need to challenge the Zionist state and all those who facilitate its genocidal campaign couldn’t be clearer.
In the latest outburst of national security hysteria, ASIO spy chief Mike Burgess declared, in a speech on 28 February, that an unnamed former Australian politician had betrayed our beloved country by clandestinely working for an evil foreign spy network—which he called “the A-team”—to provide secret information to a rival power.
Banyule City Council has become the eighth metro council in the Melbourne area to formally call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.
In a monumental betrayal, Melbourne University’s Students’ Council last month voted to rescind a motion supporting the Palestinian struggle for self-determination and the global Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement.
The military ordered hundreds of thousands of people into a designated “safe” zone. On reaching it, they were shelled by the army and the air force. The generals said there was another safe zone; if the people kept moving, respite would be found. It wasn’t. Again they were attacked. The scene repeated, but now, corralled onto a tiny stretch of beach and trapped against the ocean, there was no way out.